Stephen Fry
HEROES Volume II of Mythos
CONTENTS Picture Credits Foreword Map The Olympians Introduction Hera’s Dream PERSEUS The Shower of Gold The Wooden Chest The Two Strangers in the Oak Grove The Graeae Gorgon Island Andromeda and Cassiopeia The Return to Seriphos HERACLES The Line of Perseus Snakes Alive Youth and Upbringing of a Hero Crime and Punishment The Labours of Heracles 1. The Nemean Lion 2. The Lernaean Hydra 3. The Ceryneian Hind 4. The Erymanthian Boar 5. The Augean Stables 6. The Stymphalian Birds 7. The Cretan Bull 8. The Mares of Diomedes (incorporating the Story of Alcestis and Admetus) 9. The Girdle of Hippolyta 10. The Cattle of Geryon 11. The Golden Apples of the Hesperides 12. Cerberus After the Labours: Crimes and Grudges The Giants: a Prophecy Fulfilled The Shirt of Nessus Apotheosis BELLEROPHON The Winged One Bearing False Witness In Lycia Chimerical Reaction Flying Too High ORPHEUS The Power to Soothe the Savage Beast Orpheus and Eurydice Orpheus in the Underworld The Death of Orpheus JASON The Ram Return to Iolcos The Argo The Isle of Lemnos The Dolionians Hylas Disappears Harpies The Clashing Rocks Deaths, Razor-Sharp Feathers and the Phrixides The Eagle King Three Goddesses Medea The Khalkotauroi The Grove of Ares Escape from Colchis The Journey Home The Magical Death of Pelias Medea Rises Up ATALANTA Born to Be Wild The Calydonian Boar The Calydonian Hunt The Foot Race OEDIPUS The Oracle Speaks Where Three Roads Meet The Riddle of the Sphinx Long Live the King The Aftermyth THESEUS The Chosen One Under the Rock The Labours of Theseus 1. Periphetes 2. Sinis 3. The Crommyonian Sow 4. Sciron 5. Cercyon and the Birth of Wrestling 6. Procrustes, the Stretcher The Wicked Stepmother The Marathonian Bull The Queen of Poisons The Story of the Tribute The Bull from the Sea To Crete The Dungeons of Knossos The Bull Man Abandonment and Flight Father and Son Theseus, the King Envoi The Offspring of Echidna and Typhon The Rages of Heracles Afterword Illustrations List of Characters Olympian Gods Primordial Beings Monsters Mortals Acknowledgements Follow Penguin
To all the heroes we have never heard of. Perhaps you are one.
Picture Credits
S ECTION O NE 1. Olympus. Iliad Room, Palazzo Pitti (fresco), Luigi Sabatelli. De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman. 2. Prometheus Bound, Peter Paul Rubens, c.1611–18. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA, USA / Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1950 / Alamy. 3. Danaë, 1907–8, Gustav Klimt. Galerie Wurthle, Vienna, Austria / Bridgeman. 4. Danaë and Baby Perseus being Rescued by Corsali in Serifo Island, Jacques Berger, 1806. De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman. 5. Perseus, Jacques-Clément Wagrez, 1879. Peter Horree / Alamy. 6. Medusa, painted on a leather jousting shield, Caravaggio, c.1596–98. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Tuscany, Italy / Bridgeman. 7. Perseus and Andromeda, Carle van Loo, seventeenth century. State Hermitage, St Petersburg / Alamy. 8. Young boy portrayed as Heracles choking the snakes (marble), Roman, (second century AD). Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy / Heritage Image Partnership / Alamy. 9. The Origin of the Milky Way, 1575, Jacopo Tintoretto. National Gallery / Alamy. 10. Heracles and the Nemean Lion, Pieter Paul Rubens. Historic Collection / Alamy. 11. Athenian Attic black-figure amphora with Heracles carrying the Erymanthean Boar, c.510 BC. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA / Alamy. 12. Amazonomachy, first century BC, clay with polychrome remains. Campana collection, Italy / Alamy. 13. Heracles, Attic Kylix in the style of Douris, c.480 BC. Vulci, Papal Government – Vincenzo Campanari excavations, 1835–1837 / Vatican Museums. 14. The Garden of the Hesperides, c.1892. Frederic Leighton. Lady Lever Art Gallery / Alamy. 15. Zeus Striking the Rebelling Giants (the Fall of Giants) in The Hall of Jupiter, 1530-33 (fresco). Perino del Vaga. Villa del Principe, Italy / Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman. 16. Winged horse Pegasus, ridden by Greek mythological hero Bellerophon. Official symbol of the Parachute Regiment / Alamy. 17. Orpheus before Pluto (Hades) and Persephone, Francois Perrier, seventeenth century. Louvre, Paris, France / Bridgeman. 18. Orpheus and Eurydice, Enrico Scuri, nineteenth century. De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti / Bridgeman.
S ECTION T WO 19. Priestess of Delphi, John Collier, 1891. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide / Alamy. 20. Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896, John William Waterhouse. Manchester Art Gallery, UK / Alamy. 21. Jason and the Argonauts Sail Through the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks). Engraving depicting Jason and the Argonauts from ‘Tableaux du temple des muses’ (1655). Almay. 22. Jason Taming the Bulls of Aeëtes, 1742, Jean Francois de Troy. The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, UK / Bridgeman. 23. Medea, Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys, nineteenth century. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman. 24. Medea Putting the Dragon guarding the Golden Fleece to Sleep, Spanish School, nineteenth century. Private Collection / © Look and Learn / Bridgeman. 25. And plunged them deep within the locks of gold (pen and ink on paper), Maxwell Ashby Armfield, Illustration for ‘Life & Death of Jason’ by William Morris. Private Collection / Bridgeman. 26. The Calydonian Boar Hunt, 1617, Peter Paul Rubens. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna / Alamy. 27. Atalanta and Hippomenes, c.1612, Guido Reni. Prado, Madrid, Spain / Bridgeman. 28. Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864, Gustave Moreau. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA / Alamy. 29. Red-figured Kylix, depicting the deeds of the hero Theseus, made in Athens. Dated fifth century BC. British Museum / Alamy. 30. Theseus Taming the Bull of Marathon, 1745, Charles-André van Loo. Los Angeles County Museum of Art / Alamy. 31. The Toreador Fresco, Knossos Palace, Crete, c.1500 BC (fresco) / National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece / Bridgeman. 32. The Tribute to the Minotaur, woodcut engraving from the original painting by Auguste Gendron, 1882. Glasshouse Images / Alamy. 33. The Legend of Theseus with a Detail of the Cretan Labyrinth (engraving), sixteenth century. Private Collection / Bridgeman. 34. Attic bilingual eye-cup with black-figure interior depicting running minotaur and inscription reading ‘the boy is beautiful’. Werner Forman Archive / Bridgeman. 35. Landscape with Fall of Icarus, Carlo Saraceni, 1606–7. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Campania, Italy / Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Sergio Anelli / Bridgeman. 36. Ariadne in Naxos, 1925–26 (tempera on handwoven linen), Joseph Southall. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman. 37. Statue of Theseus, Athens. © Sotiris Tsagariolos / Alamy.
Foreword Heroes can be regarded as a continuation to my book Mythos, which told the story of the beginning of everything, the birth of the Titans and gods and the creation of mankind. You don’t need to have read Mythos to follow – and I hope enjoy – this book, but plenty of footnotes will point you, by paperback page number, to stories, characters and mythical events that were covered in Mythos and which can be encountered there in fuller detail. Some people find footnotes a distraction, but I have been told that plenty of readers enjoyed them last time round, so I hope you will navigate them with pleasure as and when the mood takes you. I know how off-putting for some Greek names can be – all those Ys, Ks and PHs. Where possible I have suggested the easiest way for our English-speaking mouths to form them. Modern Greeks will be astonished by what we do to their wonderful names, and German, French, American and other readers – who have their own ways with Ancient Greek – will wonder at some of my suggestions. But that is all they are, suggestions … whether you like to say Eddipus or Eedipus, Epidaurus or Ebeethavros, Philoctetes or Philocteetees, the characters and stories remain the same.